Chapter Fourteen
Husbandry and Homeland Security
“ … all the time fresh air, sunshine and good water.”
--- Flying Hawk, the South Dakota plains, 1852 – 1931 CE
Constructing Grace’s Listening curriculum presented itself as nowhere nearly as involved as even one
Halloween, Thanksgiving Day, Bodhi Day, Human Rights Day, Chanukah, Winter Solstice, Christmas,
Kwaanza, New Year’s Day, Valentine’s Day, International Women’s Day, Vernal Equinox or Earth Day
celebration and gathering for the Truemaier Boys though. The last – of – the – year’s holidays were again
upon us as they were upon all of the kids and all of their families and neighbors, at school, at Herry’s
branch, everywhere.
Except Quaker Meeting. What a beautiful respite Quaker Meeting is at this time of the vatican nation’s
gregorian calendar, that time – and – event construct put together and made so fuckingly important by
squatty, robed and allegedly holy men. Only things we Quakers did were four. Contributed dollars and
labor to and served during the Community Thanksgiving Day Dinner. Dished up scrumptious victuals to
about 400 of the community every single late November and not just to the ‘poor’ either. Not in Ames.
Everyone who wants to eat or scrub pots and pans alongside some stranger comes. Sang carols at about
three different nursing homes. And held the Frugal at the Meetinghouse, really a usual monthly thing and
often hosted in Quakers’ homes during other months. Usual this particular one was, too, except for that
extra event which occurs inside Twelfth Month’s Frugal every year: the White Elephant Holiday Gift
Exchange. The Boys’ and my first time since it was our first holiday season with the Ames Friends
Meeting, ‘Friends’ being the original name of Quakers. That is, we all were first known as the Religious
Society of Friends. Then Friends took on for ourselves as our own moniker the mocking and the taunting
meant to demean us that is the noun Quaker; but that’s another story, and something we see happen in other
areas of life from time to time. Ergo ... as another such example, the noun ... mother – fucking.
Herry’d come to Quaker Meeting I think three times in Columbia where we had all first hooked up with the
Friends 01 Eleventh Month 1983, on the recommendation then of a visiting academic agriculturist / rural
sociologist to whom I had been introduced in an international agriculture seminar course which I took there
during graduate school and who knew about the Quakers’ humanitarian aid projects through the American
Friends Service Committee, the Quakers’ domestic and foreign quests. Herry gloriously and grandly talked
– that more talk and more talk of his – of our family of five doing such Friends’ work in Central America,
specifically in Costa Rica, the safest, the richest and the most comfortable country in the region.
Instead of that happening at all, Herry and I evolved very, very quickly into the subjects of a Clearness
Committee meeting convened by two or three intervening and allegedly neutral Friends Meeting members
because Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had requested one. When I wouldn’t do something Herry wanted –
subsequently about which at the time, I don’t even remember what specific one that something was.
When this one certain committee meeting, then, didn’t go his way from its very ‘clear’ git – go, why, Herry
quit Quaker Meeting and Quakerism. Like a hot coal. Like a “not exciting” – enough female. Like he quit
soccer – coaching us dud – mothers’ kiddies. Right now. And never went there again. He’s never been to
Costa Rica once. Still. And not to any other Central American country either. That humanitarian stuff ’d
all be just so much ... well, work! Even with that homeland’s excused – away – as – ‘cultural’ aprovechar
and pervasive machismo corruption.
So I took the Boys alone. Where before have we all read this chapter and verse in godly men’s
instructional catechisms, especially on how to teach their own itty bitty ones on their so heralded and
supposedly belovéd and o – so righteous religious canons, edicts, laws and precepts? Complacently,
as a matter of fact. If men, fathers, patriarchs themselves are accountable for it. Women, as far as the
children’s learning about the churchy, androcentric religions is concerned, have had to do the work of it all
– inside the Western World at least.
75
As far as any of it mattered to Herry, he was a vehemently avowed and very dyed – in – the – wolf’s – wool
atheist and had married me some eleven years earlier as only such. In the Memorial Lutheran Church in
Ames, though, during one of my Missouri Synod throwback episodes to Mehitable and AmTaham which
I, back then, seemed to suffer from – from time to time. And under which same primitive reversions so, so
many American adult female children still irrationally operate. Blindly and blitheringly and blatheringly
following, as they most surely are, with their very own babies in tow Grandma’s and Grandpa’s religious
fuck right over the mother – fucking precipice and down to their own and their babes’ utterly and entirely
preventable demises. ... IF only these women, these mamas, had been strong enough to first recognize
that they actually possess and then go ahead and assert their very own ... scientific mindsets! Their own
know–ledge of ... reason! Of what is and what is not reason–able!
Hardly Woodstock – esque our wedding was. Done up, the marrying ritual at least, all nice and neat and
legal and proper and christian – like by a fully ordained and pious guy there called a reverend or a minister
or some such patriarchal en‘title’ment who pronounced stuff down upon both Herry and me exactly one
week – 18 December 1976 – before that stuff – and – more – stuff event known in christian Western
Hemispheric denominations as christmas day.
On that very same date in 1971, somewhere else in the country, Memphis I believe, Lionel was united
in matrimony to Grace and promised there to her all of those very same things that Herod was now just
a half a decade later avowing to me back up here in wintry Iowa. Uncannily coincidental, huh? Elsewhere
too, I presume, people were wedding other people about that same Winter Solstice time in 1976, and, as
simultaneously as we two were betrothing, they were also making solid, unswerving pledges to each other
themselves.
How utterly silly this is, I am thinking today. It is impossible for all the humans I know to actually believe,
even at the very time that they are saying this stuff out loud to each other, that they are going to be any
different and actually keep true what they’ve just affirmed. What they’ve just stated out loud that they will.
There’s that willingness problem thing.
A research study couldn’t be done because of its massiveness; but I would like to know just how many of
those couples who plighted themselves to each other that very same day in history, Worldwide, actually
kept those promises in all ways and are so connected still today nearly 24 years later. Key and central to
the study would be how, honestly now, do they both feel today and all during the years intervening as
compared to how they felt about themselves and the promises that they so freely gave away on that actual
day of promising.
No wonder that a few folks do re – vowing, repledging deals at their temples or mosques or blessing circles
or meetinghouses or wherever. All other licensures, certifications and registrations that I can think of have
to be redone and revised and renewed and refreshed periodically, and actually often those periods are.
It only seems logical to have to refresh this thing called promising each other. Like really, really often, too.
So folks would not have a chance to forget. One Simple Observation of the Earth.
Since the research would reveal, yes, I venture to speculate, less than 50 percent of couples ‘legalized’ via
patriarchally religious or androcentrically governmental marriage on 18 December 1976, able to answer
that they are the same and always have been since that first day, then why do we do it at all? Hoping to up
the percentages of Truth in Promising in some century soon, are we? There’s that hope problem thing
again.
I don’t mind folks being together. I’m as much for telling people you love them and enjoying an ecstatic
romp in the hay and raising strong, healthy children of reason and spirit and rationality together as the next
couple. As the next couple of women and men. Or couple of women. Or couple of men. Just don’t say to
me or to each other that it’ll always be so. It won’t always be so. And then, you’ll have lied. When you
simply didn’t need to. Here, that hypocrisy problem thing doesn’t have to be. Allah or no god.
76
And then, the minister also pronounced approvals and favor and blessings down upon (originally,
according to this particular patriarchal religion’s canons, … ‘illegitimate’) Zane in the pew off to my left
side – his being cuddled there in the matron – in – waiting’s warm arms and now himself just a week away
from commencing his fifth month of life. Wearing his lovely little, but manly of course, white christening
suit from several weeks back and sporting the yellow elastic – topped booties. I couldn’t find the white
ones that specific Saturday morning. Poor, unmatching Z … First portent, perhaps, of an unmatch
otherwise, too.
So. For Herod, even though he had promised and promised and vowed and affirmed whatever, First Days
meant to him a married morning of every single week finally free at last of me and of the running – around
rugrats so that he could be home alone with his Sunday paper, the current Playboy and his right hand.
Wine bottle neck mouths for a lot of men, including Herry, weren’t exciting enough then either. Maybe he
was worried about getting his stuck. And now? I don’t know about now. He knew I knew about this hand
jive of his though. Wasn’t like his not knowing that I knew of the cows, dogs, pigs and chickens beasties.
And the incest? Like almost all women everywhere are never able to actually possess this ‘kind’ of
information, I too had no material proof, no witnesses, a dead ex – mother – in – law and no talking sister –
outlaws so Lawyer Jinx said that all of this information wouldn’t help. Even if it had been admissible, I am
thinking now, “It didn’t matter. No one in ‘the court’ thinks it matters. These men? Least of all, to these
men. These holy, pious, honorable, godly, righteous sons of …. fucked mothers. They will never think it
matters; they never have before. Jinx and his own Playboy magazines yelling at me. As I, a mere mama,
am attempting to help Zane, for the love of christ, try himself to just be 11 years old! And Jesse 9 and
Mirzah 8!”
“A lot of nice people read Playboy, Legion! You shut up about this sex addiction stuff now, ya’ hear!!
You’re just exasperating!!!” shouted Jinx right up into my face as he slammed shut his mighty fine office
door and me, quite literally by his own two palms shoving both of my shoulders, thumped upside of it.
Only time it would matter is if … I … had done all those things. Sexism: the Original Sin. Flip / Reverse.
If I’d subscribed to Playgirl and helped my sons to sample its tasty morsels of enlightening pornography.
If I’d tended to my G – spot and to my clitoris more than to my husband’s penis. If I had tended to my
brother Sterling’s penis at all. If I had permitted there to be developed computer – generated whoring
‘business cards’ with my sons’ contact information on them, they serving as their own mama’s pimps and
procurers. Even ‘just’ as a ‘joke’. If I had ever been seen to offer an enticing innuendo by way of a sinking
neckline one button too many undone. Let alone, had stood fully unclothed in front of a fully lit bedroom
window to the blackened urban woods below it or had painted on to me skin – tight denims with crotch
crevices strategically placed so as to inform, complete with long curly brown pubes clearly visible through
the raggedy cracks, of the no – underpants nuance. If I, as Grace’s girlfriend or at all, had sidled upside,
say Lionel, and during his and my mutual egress together from a bottlenecked microbiology lecture hall,
had greedily grabbed on to the Portia family’s jewels in one greaseball’s grip of a grope. If I had donned a
dripping nightshirt – length tee or a just – out – of – the – shower terry towel to ‘conceal’ my trunkish torso
in order to answer a knock at Othello’s infamous front door. If I had taken my children’s father – to – be to
a ‘progressively leftist’ antiwar rally – and protest – planning meeting at all, let alone, brought him to one
convening at a table within three feet of those working their shifts and plying their trade’s wares at Mr. B’s
lap – lubricating, pole – dancing, bare – beavering strip joint on Ames’ Main Street. If I, at any time, had
stuffed anything up my husband’s ass. If I had driven – anywhere – Herry’s newborn and that wee one’s
two – year – old bro tanked up within my beery belly on my most recent consumption of an entire six pack.
If I had managed – by way of sorcery and magical hexing incantations now – say, a throat – throttling
chokehold to bring down Herry enough in order to get him kneed in the breastbone and threaten his facial
features with my fists or sling him over my left shoulder like so much bagged waste, pitch him off of it then
onto the homeland’s front stoop and, from his entire watching family, lock him out of his homeland for two
full days’ and two full nights’ worth. If I had not known both their first and last names and addresses, let
alone, all of their credentials of all of the Boys’ babysitters when I traveled for work. If I had traveled for
work at all! If I had, while traveling, ‘comforted’ anyone else while away from husband, hearth and home.
77
If I had perjured myself by way of sworn court documents ballyhooing and flaunting graduate college
degrees which I had never earned nor been granted and decades’ worth of sobriety from alcohol or by lying
about nearly everything else. If I had purchased without espouso’s input and approval because I considered
myself some gigola’s brand of especial espousa who did not have to respect, let alone, honor his mutuality
and support, two airplanes and two homeland houses. If I had slept right through a veterinary call to a
dairyman’s cow maybe not yet unconscious but quite down and certainly well on her way to that state
because of the paralysis to her obturator nerve by way of milk fever occurring soon after calving. Another
one of the Earth’s babes in absolute need of its mama. In need of its mama alive and … there. If I had
allowed, well, not even bothered to do the work of knowing in the first place that Teenagers Zane and Jesse
had headed off for fishing parts unknown of, say, Spruce Knob Lake or that one or both of them intended to
stand 20 feet up a treeside but I – and no one else either – had no knowledge of where that hunting was
taking place nor of the Boys’ intended itinerary in the Monongahela Forest, let alone, their expected time
of arrival back at my homeland.
If I had, … well, enough. Then … then is when this stuff would matter and, in the filliping and flicking
flim flammery of opposing Lawyer Shindy Scheisser’s flashy and mother – fucking motioning, it’d’ve all
been admissible as well. Only then.
Pillared Dr. Herod Edinsmaier does any, let alone, all of these acts – and I say so? I am lying, and it does
not matter anyhow. “Shut up, Bitch. Shut the fuck up!”
True it is. O, so head – bangingly true it is. “ … and besides which, Witchy, you know as well as I do:
there ain’t no judge who dudn’t himself surf porn!” chants one so – wise Ms. Rachel in her 20 – something
crone’s worth of a Winter Solstice spell nearly a decade after the 25 – judges’ disgraces which have come
to be known within all of ‘the courts’ of Iowa as the three trials and the two appeals of “In re the Marriage
of Edinsmaier.”
Same rural isolation and blaming that women Worldwide always endure. Golden Rule stuff? Not.
Double Standard stuff. Same ol’, same ol’ Double Standard stuff. Right there in the state district court’s
legal system of the good ol’ US of A. My own lawyer’s office. The stuff of witch – hunts so alive and so
flourishing. Still. Of course.
I couldn’t even have a boyfriend Lawyer Jinx finger – wagged, “You stay clean as a whistle. I’m tellin’
ya’, Woman! No men!”
“But.”
“Absolutely none. I do not give a good goddamn shit what you think you know about the law, Legion
True. No men! None! Zip! Am I making myself clear enough here?! Do not, I repeat, don’t you ever be
telling me that there’s been just even one over to your place. Not even one. Ya’ got that straight now?!”
So, then. End of that. Never did one come over. Not one. Not even poor Láslzó. One of my closest
friends, Láslzó. And a truer friend I’ve never had. Láslzó’s gay and even he couldn’t come over! What
a society! What a (nearly – ended!) 20th Century American society! What a literally mother – fucking ...
homeland!
*
*
*
*
Where in her own homeland, to escape incest and bestiality, was Detanimod going to run off to – with her
five daughters and her six sons and the bazillion dairy calves and the baby chicks for all of whom she was
responsible on the farm? Exactly to where now? When there are three times more animal shelters in
America than there are shelters for violated women and their families? And about zero such shelters for
women with flocks and herds of children, chicks and calves trying to rescue them all and escape the waging
war zone o – so silently violent out there in the desolate plains’ and prairies’ countryside? How was
Mother going to separate and protect the several sisters, and apparently necessarily, too, her Leghorn and
Rhode Island Red pullets as well as Holstein heifers, from brothers and from ol’ Juggern himself? Beseech
78
the priests? When Juggern was himself Fatland’s chief Catholic lay cleric!? Implore the Republican
sheriff of the county? The sheriff whom Juggern, as the Bass County chairman of its Republican Party,
had helped get elected so many terms ago? “Doncha’ dare be exasperating, Detanimod! How dare you
be vexatious now, Ya’ Stupid Ass Heifer!”
I had walked back in on Herry practicing a certain Holy Roman Catholic canon rather quite antiCatholically
one Sunday morning, the right one of his hands very busy jiving and the left one steadying and supporting
and gripping the chair arm. The Boys were all seat – belted in, but the car wouldn’t start.
So Herry knew that I knew about that. From that episode, at least, way back in Hershey when I was taking
the Boys those Sundays to the Lord of Love Lutheran Church there. A love church. A peace church. I am
thinking, “Isn’t that an oxymoron in diocesan terrain when comparing its name to the number of wars and
battles fought abroad – and to those fought within our own homeland, within its parishioners’ very own
homes – by its present congregants genuflecting peace this and love that if ever I’d heard one?!”
There were so many other interludes between my leaving a room Herod was in and my later re – entering
it that I just lost track of how many “Get OUT!”s I’d had barked at me. Bone – crushing were the loads of
soiled laundry I washed from Herry’s staining. That year? The year of the ten –, now 11 – year – old’s
– – and younger sons’ – – Playboy subscription? Maybe a little more than usual. But probably not.
The White Elephant Frugal is a good thing. Most years somebody swaddles something up in last First
Day’s colored comic strips – wrapping paper that was a former white elephant from holiday Frugals past.
And, of course, every year there are new fiascoes, fizzles, flops, debacles. And duds for presents.
It’s just great. Certainly not anywhere near, in me, an atavism to Mehitable and how she would have
wrapped something up and termed it a ‘gift’. Too bad for her. Would’ve earned her Ancestor – in –
Training points if she had. O well.
The other good thing about Frugal and ‘this holiday time’ with Friends Meeting is that, now for Legion
True with the Truemaier Boys, there isn’t any dumping at this one era of the androcentric calendar
construct. They get gifts, sure, plenty of presents. Sometimes frugally, sometimes not so. But just not on
some specific day of someone lighting candles or praying to Allah special phrases under some allegedly
special and godly man’s raised right – hand blessing. They get their christmas gifts any bloody damn time
of the year I frickin’ feel like giving them some stuff. It is so freeing for me. And for them. It appears to
me that they didn’t even notice the absence of the dump. Maybe I missed it – and Mirzah, Jesse and Zane
were way disappointed and crushed, but I never saw it. Free at last.
I decorated any time I good and damn felt like putting out secondhand crepe streamers, door ribbons, pink
and red construction – paper hearts, snowman candles of gardenia and vanilla almond scents and burning
jasmine and lavender incense found at Goodwill or basement bazaars. Or not at all. No lights either. I still
can’t see squandering my dimes, dimes meant for landmine elimination and children’s bellies and teens’
judicial bypass crises as well as their and their boyfriends’ emergency condoms’ cache quietly kept stashed
within very easy weekend access inside the garage’s middle workbench drawer, … – – I can’t see
consuming those coins on tinkling, twinkling lights’ electricity. More than a half a dozen times over the
years, it might be September, it might be January with a foot of snow on the dead grass, and there’d be the
Truemaier Boys in the kitchen coloring chicken eggs with food dye, vinegar and boiled water and about
eight different cups’ worth of this concoction atop old newspapers on the dining table. ‘Til it was time to
go hunt them down after I’d hidden ‘em about out there in the snow.
We four really only carved jack – o’ – lanterns in early autumn and at no other time because of the
availability of the main ingredient; but I always asked Zane, Mirzah and Jesse to help me pick through the
yucky, wet, slippery strands to save their seeds, then dry them in single layers on cookie sheets about ten
days. After a spritz with olive oil and a soak in a mixture of soya and Worcestershire sauces plus ordinary
table salt, I’d bake them up into nut – like, crunchy snacks. Every October. Now if I had been any kind of
a wifely cook at all, as Mehitable repeatedly whimpered that I so worthlessly was not, I would’ve also
saved the pumpkin meat itself for pies, bars or cookies. But, alas, I failed at that, too. Every October.
79
I have no idea where Herry was while we four were working the pumpkin, but he was nowhere near the toil
of it and probably not even hanging around the newspaper – strewn kitchen table – just talking – during any
of the times of all of this labor. Like I say, I do not remember him being anywhere around during carving
times. I certainly do remember him not fixing up any of the Boys’ costumes. Times three. Times umpteen
years per October. Much less, any of the thinking about and the planning for them beforehand. Kinda’ like
the same amount of no thinking and of no planning that Dr. Edinsmaier put into any hot supper menu from
the meat and vegetables frozen solid in the icebox while, every morning though, most assuredly
remembering to anoint his sweet – smelling self in anticipation of his high – level hospital cafeteria coffee
breaks with whatever female subordinate de jour.
While I stayed at home and passed out the treats to our littlest tricksters, Herry did do most of the years’
worth of walking the Boys door to door receiving, of course, the sugary confections and the verbal
accolades from the folks up the street and the friends over in the next court and the total strangers whose
porch lights were on in the neighborhood. The acclamations of O! How cute! they all looked and weren’t
they just adorable. And all. Then, when home, it was time for me to spring into action before the Boys’
hungry eyes overtook their patience and traipse all of the bags over to the local ER for x – ray, then monitor
all the candies and wrappers myself for non – radiographic evils possibly penetrating our homeland.
Alone again. That was work. So no Herry there either.
And Herry never spaded out the hole in the cold, hard dirt into which to eventually plant the balled and
rooted blue spruce which was first, for at least the ten days’ time between the Winter Solstice and New
Year’s Day, our living and decorated tree of christmas 1987. In Eleventh Month I dug that ditch before the
hardest freezes descended onto the earth and covered it with plywood, plastic tarp and rocks to keep out the
sleet and slush. I could describe in major detail just how many christmases before this one I had
accomplished all of the various holidays’ celebratory preparations alone – always alone – but I would
exhaust myself remembering to catalog them all. I just cannot do it.
All of them, except for that one christmas eve in Columbia when I revolted and refused. And no christmas
at all happened that one year. Like I was hoping it would somehow materialize Herry – style or whatever.
It did not. Hope fails. Hope kills. Kills holidays, too, it does. All the christmas mornings since were just
like that first one that I do, at least, remember back in Hershey when then three – year –old Jesse uncovered
the biggest, the bluest and the most beautifully wrapped bundle under Santa’s live tree type, too, that
December. And that present turned out to be Jesse’s very own dolly. Which he immediately threw down,
“Tanna make a matake!.”
And then – later, gradually – picked up again. And subsequently – a bit after himself – named Peter Jesse.
Valentine’s was in 1988 as before: the same ol’, same ol’ as well. Just like Halloween. Just like
christmas. Rush, rush, rush, spend, spend, spend. Then throw away and throw some more away.
Shit, this bothered me so much. That my sons were learning this fuck, too. Rush, spend, consume, toss.
Rush, spend, consume, toss. Then. Do it all over again the next month. What a cycling this was. And
then, too, to be worried throughout this all about their personal safety from … other people.
While I really do not know whether Mr. Flying Hawk who walked the World of his own plains’ homeland
as an Oglala Sioux from 1852 through something like 1931 CE may or may not have been mean to his
wives, whether he was or was not hard – hearted and mean – spirited to them and to other women, he did
happen to state something about homeyness in his old age which AmTaham found worth repeating, “The
teepee is much better to live in: always clean, warm in winter, cool in summer, easy to move. Indians and
animals know better how to live with grace than white man. Nobody can be in good health if he does not
have … all the time fresh air, sunshine and good water.” So true that is, I know. But even Ms. Flying
Hawk knew back then that her kids especially were not secure, were not safe from, were not protected from
… other people.
*
*
*
*
80
Early Spring 1988 arrived. Its Vernal Equinox was followed in just a greening month’s time by its Earth
Day. One of those other people was about to enter my life, a woman this one was, by the simple name of
Li Zhang, a name which probably, right now, labels nearly a million or more people in the World – both
women and men alike. That’s a point. This not keeping my little self within, literally now, my very own
homeland protected from other people can arise from so many, many angles that these unsafe people might
as well all have the same name and I not be able to tell them apart. They’re so alike in several ways, the
least of which, of course, are their own names. I, to this day, have never met this woman face to face.
She was lodging one particular March day and night at the Knickerbocker Hotel in Chicago and, while
conferencing there, was apparently victimized by theft of some valuable stuff of hers I was told, a camera
or a purse or a microscope. Something like that.
There’d been a medical meeting. I believe the umpteenth medical meeting in my and the Truemaier Boys’
lives. When Herry left Othello Drive for it, I was only given the same ol’, same ol’ as I had been so
passively and so wickedly told at the outset of all of the rest of the local and statewide medical meetings
or national, cross – country trips Herry had taken and attended before this 1988 one. That being, at a
minimum, two per year for 11 years so not umpteen of them but, as a matter of fact, about 22 or 23 for
certain by now, “Where am I going to be? You don’t need to know that, now do you really? Do ya’?
If an emergency came up, well, … well, you’d have to go on and handle it by yourself alone anyhow,
now wouldn’t ya’, Cunt? Well, wouldn’t ya’?!”
“Yeah. Yeah, Herry, I suppose so.”
“Well, then. I’m off.”
And that was it. Gone. No kiss. And no telephone number. At where to try to get a hold of him.
Hell, Herod Edinsmaier wouldn’t even know himself the first names nor the last ones of the vast majority
of our babysitters, let alone, their home telephone numbers around the towns where we lived; that is, the
Boys’ surrogate caregivers – when their primary one wasn’t I, that person never being he. In case when
he telephoned home to say that his plane had arrived to wherever safely and we four were unavailable or
out when he called, then Dr. Edinsmaier could ring up one of them instead with the message that he was
okay and ask them to get it back to us. We didn’t always have an answering machine in those days.
Then Herry could go on about his medical business meeting there knowing that we, his loving family back
in his homeland, were reassured about his safe arrival and subsequent sojourning, too.
Shit! For what did I just the fuck go and write that down? He never called back to say that. No, he never,
ever did. Not one time did Dr. Herod Edinsmaier even try to telephone back home or to anyone else near
our several, various homes – nannies, neighbors, my friends – to say anything like that at all: that he was
safe. Much less, to find out … if we were!
What am I thinking?! Herry never even locked the homeland doors before himself retiring to bed at night.
Actually outwardly stating to me that that was too much work to do, that he was too tired and that it
wouldn’t matter anyhow: if someone really wanted to get inside and do us all in, why then they’d find a
way to get that done – with us all locked in or not.
So. I, every single night of the 12½ years which he, according to mother – fucking society and according
to himself, headed up and was socially credited as its bloomin’ lord and master with keeping safe our
household, locked all of our homes’ doors myself. If they were going to be secured at all, then it was up to
me – – no matter how tired I may have been, too. No matter that. That little itty bitty thing. No matter that
it was every single night. The man, he is especial. He is, ya’ know, so off to bed he goes whenever,
however. Don’t you be expecting him to do any of the work of protecting and of keeping safe you, let
alone, his and your kids, by his having to do the work of remembering to and then actually getting up off of
his ass and going to the ridiculously stupid effort of locking the family home’s mother – fucking doors.
81
Fuck, Dr. Edinsmaier gets to sleep right through anesthetized and unconscious women’s (that’s plural!)
scheduled breast biopsies without actually losing anything, like ya’ know, his job, let alone, his medical
license! Why shouldn’t I be thinking that Herry would also get to sleep right through basic home security,
too?!
“Fuck!” I used to think every single time but dare never state to Herry for fear of his upbraiding and
dressing down, “Mirzah could be dead, Herry! Mirzah could be stone – cold dead – and … and Jesse and
Zane and I have him buried already! And you would never even know to care to be back in town in time
from any of your bloody fucking meetings to kiss him good – bye. We could actually do that! We could
actually bury for you … all – absolutely all … of your blesséd children for all you knew and cared! Many
times over we could actually have done this! For all that you cared.”
But silenced I kept. Every single trip. Herry always had at his ready that standard, pat ‘question – answer’
sprinkled with those little extra loving terms of endearment for departing from me, “Well, Bitch, you’d
have to handle it now yourself alone anyhow, wouldn’t ya’?!, Well now, wouldn’t ya’?” That common
genre of question that Dr. Herod Edinsmaier had himself, often, already concretely – hard and cold as
concrete stone – answered ... as he was allegedly mouthing its querying words. Same type of already
answered question as when Herry from those darkened halves of the bed simply took for himself from
behind those any – time – of – night, rocks – off quickies which he unloaded up my anus.
Same as everywhere else we lived. If I truly did need to know the name of the hotel, its phone number
for guest information, the name of the meeting, the length of the meeting, the brand of flight or the route
driven or, well, let’s just say if I needed to know squat I would, now 22 or 23 times, have had to call up
Dr. Edinsmaier’s colleagues’ spouses and ask from them all of this information. “Gosh, Ms. Goldstein,
ah, Ella, do you know the name of the hotel where Dr. Goldstein, ah, where Freddie, is going to be? And
they’re taking what flight? And, … ah, ‘nd they’re expected back, ah, when exactly now? Gosh. Thanks
an awful lot. So sorry to’ve been a bother to you about this.”
Never, in 22 or 23 times, was there even the illusion to me that if shit happened to any one of us four,
Herry’d be like, “Whoa, Darling, I’m there! I’m on the next flight there! Just hang on, Love! Hug the
babes and keep your eyes and your arms open. I’m almost there!” Never. Not one mother – fucking time.
Ever. O, wait a sec! It did too! Several times this happened. But always in Another World … in my
Fantasy World.
Just like Herry never once rang up my folks living very near to Iowa City to ask them if his most belovéd
wife and his most belovéd children had made it there to Grandma’s and Grandpa’s okay. Not one time.
Ever. When all four of us – alone and always, always without Herry – traveled to Mehitable’s and
AmTaham’s for any kind of those 12½ years’ worth of vacations or holidays or just simple, ordinary visits.
It took one hour to slide across slithery Columbia one christmas eve the ice and the wind were so bad. And
it was now, on its northernmost slope, dark – time treacherous.
A normal trip to Williamsburg in great weather and with good roads? Six hours. Three little itty bitty kids
all lined up in the back in their respective car seats and their mama. Christmas eve and an hour to navigate
what normally took a mere 10 minutes. I pulled into the last gas station before leaving the City and rang up
mom. To hear Mehitable’s response, you’d’ve thought our not coming for christmas that year was going to
bring down the Fires of Hell onto all the little girls’ and all the little boys’ christmases all over the World.
“It’s noooot that bad out. The reports here are not what you say. You’re always exaggerating. You don’t
know. What’s Herry say? I just know it’s not that bad. You’re overreacting again. Just take it slow.
What’s Herry say? You’ve talked to Herry, right? What’s he say? The Boys’ll be sooooo disappointed.
How can you take this away from them? Herry wouldn’t. You know he wouldn’t. You know he wouldn’t
say no to them. You know that. He wouldn’t sooooo disappoint them like you’re goin’ to.” Mehitable, of
course, didn’t right out loud on the telephone say Bitch! Or Stupid! Or Stupid Ass Heifer! Or You Don’t
Have a Brain of Your Own! But. She did.
Herry didn’t even look up when we walked back in the door.
82
At least and, of course so alone the next morning on christmas day, I thanked myself, “We didn’t go.
I stood alone. We did not go. I did not try to move – with my babies, with my babies’ breaths –
one mother – fucking inch further. Merci. Merci. Danke very much!”
That particular 24 December evening I probably saved all of our lives and the lives of folks we don’t even
know and will never know. Another one of those life – altering events that night. Gone wholly unnoticed
and unheralded. Except by a mother fucked. I had only myself to give me gratitude. Which is exactly how
Herry would have it. What I am thinking now is, “How many, many fucked mothers just like me were also
trying to do that, that is, trying to do the impossible that night and every holiday eve before and since?
The World over? How many?” Because I certainly know why they are. And why they and their babies die
when they do try to accomplish the impossible. The insanely and stupidly impossible dicta of allegedly
powerful and controlling others.
*
*
*
*
The medical meeting is all by which I knew it. Never have I known with what association or agency or
pathology college or department it was connected. A laboratory technician of some kind, Ms. Li Zhang
was attending the meeting all the way from Australia so it must’ve been a big, big one, an international
conference or seminar or summit, for her to’ve come all the way across the big, big, water and then over
half a solid continent more into Chicago. And to be so alone and so frightened, I’m so sure, when
somebody stole something of her personal stuff that day.
Or, … much more likely, she was a big, big girl having been big enough to’ve just come all that way alone
in the first place, and knew exactly what hotel security to contact and to report the theft of her stuff to and
her fears about it. As, of course, would Herod Edinsmaier also have been. Would also have been a big, big
boy. Big enough, that is, to’ve advised Ms. Zhang of all of this as well – had he, say, been asked by her
what to do about her theft situation, about the matter of her security in a place not so much her homeland.
Nor, for that matter, Herry’s.
But Herry didn’t do that, nor did she. Instead, Dr. Edinsmaier ‘somehow’, and no one I know who also has
this information has it figured out either ‘cept Herry, of course husband already by this time and quite the
father of three little itty bitty kiddies and, well, ya’ know Herry the Family Guy, well, no one knows how it
is that he ended up in Ms. Zhang’s hotel room at 3:00 am. “I was comforting her,” were the exact and only
words Herry used when he explained to me how it was that a) he was there in her hotel room at that hour
at all anyhow and b) he, Herry, was this strange woman’s comforter and the Hotel’s dicks weren’t. Which,
it turns out, along with the Chicago cops and that City’s detectives, were never even contacted about the
theft yet by this time at all. If, as I don’t know, her things were ever burgled or not.
Only Herry was her comforter and, apparently, Only Herry’s comforting was all that was needed. O Henry.
O Herod. R e e e e e ally. That’s a str e e e e e tch. Tch.
Easter and more decorated egg – hunting quite appropriately scheduled, of course, that now being the holy
men’s calendar’s stated correct date ‘nd all, and Quaker Meeting’s Sunrise Walk in the Nutty Woods with a
lovely brunch and Silent Worship after arrived in very early April that spring. Then our first academic year
in Ames with the commute to school was almost over with Little League all set for summer, the Little
Majors for Zane, and Jesse and Mirzah both slated for the same McBride Medical Clinic – sponsored Little
Minors team. Just two different baseball parks, too, not three, so logistically I could do this. And
wonderfully, Little Majors practice and game days were on two of the different days of the week than the
two Little Minors practice and game days so four to six days a week all summer long of ball? What could
be better planned than that?!
This ‘explanation’ of said medical meeting event would never have waved itself across my only
functioning eardrum at all, a very usual phenomenon in that ages – old archive called Cheating Family Men.
“The lyin’, cheatin’ sack o’ shit is here,” Emma Rae announced her sister’s husband and the Doodlebug’s
father as – after his knock at the homeland door. In Something To Talk About, I believe it was.
83
The ‘explanation’ about Ms. Zhang and Husband Herry in her hotel room at such an hour wouldn’t’ve
come to me at all except that something came instead to poor, poor Herry first. Through the US Mails.
Actual, tangible, tactile and quite palpable, you could certainly hold this wee thing if it ended up in your
bare little hands, too. Not exactly exculpatory evidence. As we have all read now earlier on how it is that
the United States district ‘civil’ courts define evidence. A book. It was a book.
But we were not in court today. Not yet. And the evidence wouldn’t have mattered nor helped me Lawyer
Jinx also ‘explained’. Instead it was lunchtime with hot foodstuff always prepared and ready for Herry
about 12:10 or 12:15, and we were in The Pineapple Room, ya’ know, our flamboyantly wallpapered
kitchen with the sable brown pile carpet in the Family Guy’s very real, very bachelor pad, just the two of us
as Jesse, Mirzah and Zane were finishing out their Kate Mitchell year still. It was no different this
husbanding day of Tuesday, 31 May 1988, the last earthy one of that absolutely beautiful spring month
of May when Herry brought ‘round the stone and mortar fireplace island and up to the dining table the
US mail of the day just dropped through that notorious front door slot. Like pulling a camel through the
proverbial needle’s eye it was in the beginning to extract that explanation from Dr. Herod Edinsmaier after
the camel had just been squeezed through that mail slit first, but I’m getting ahead of myself, and ahead of
the Flood of biblical proportions here, a little itty bitty bit.
So much for homeland security stuff since 1491, … aaah, since 1935, er, I mean since 1976. Hapless,
haphazard, happenstance for homeland security. Happenstance as harbinger of husbandly homeland
security. Homeland security sans the heft. Heinous, hard – hearted homeland security. Homeland security
since 1491, … aaah, since, O say, since Detanimod’s first miscarriage out of that 1935 family mulberry
tree, er, I mean since 1976 and I, nightly, arising up off of my duff and actually securing our wee family’s
first home’s door locks. And, as nightly, ever since then.
84